So the other day they got caught heading down the street, way over the line!

And what was their first reaction?  They lied about it.

Does that surprise you?  

Not if you are an experienced parent.  If you’ve raised a bunch of kids like I have, you know that no one has to teach kids to lie.  It’s not peer pressure.  It’s not the media.  It’s just something they do quite naturally.  I’ve seen it in the tiniest of toddlers.  

You tell them not to do something.  You turn your back for a second, and they do it.  You ask them if they did it, and they lie.  They have cookie crumbs all over their mouth, chocolate chips melted in their hand, and they still have the guts to stand right there and tell you they didn’t do it.

Yes, it’s the sin nature, alive and well in the next generation.

So back to my friend’s twin boys.  They lied about it, but quickly realized they were caught.  So did they come clean?  Not on your life!

Get this.  They suddenly conjured up a story about brake failure!  Yeah, that’s it.  Their brakes went bad!  That’s how they ended up way over on that other street!

Then Dad said he was going to ride each bike himself and check out the brakes.  He said at that point, “They began looking at each other and knew it was all over.”

And then, Dad concluded, “It got real interesting ‘round here!”

So if you think your child is rotten because they told a lie at two years old, don’t feel bad.  They come by it quite naturally.  It’s the sin nature that we are all born with.

The good news is that, with a nice blend of discipline and love, we can steer our children away from telling lies.

The bad news is, that lying little sin nature is still rattling around down inside all of us.
It’s that little voice that says, “I’m not so bad.”

Galatians 6:3 says, “If anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself.”
Did you know it’s possible to deceive yourself?  And we usually do it by rationalizing our behavior.  

Romans 12:3 says, “Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought...,” but that’s what we are prone to do.

The other day I heard a man say, “What we think of ourselves is often an illusion.”  

He said we see other people more realistically, but we gloss over our own actions and look at what we meant to do or would have done.

So how can we silence that little liar inside us and see ourselves as we really are?

First of all, we need to see ourselves in the true reflection of God’s Word.  Hebrews 4:12 says the Word of God “judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.”

Second, we need to seek the wise counsel of others.  

Have you ever read Robert Burns’s poem entitled, “To a Louse”?  He wrote it in Scotland in the 1700’s, and the full title is, “To a Louse: On Seeing One on a Lady’s Bonnet at Church.”
It’s hard to read with all the Scottish slang, but basically it’s about seeing this pretty lady at church, and then noticing a bug crawling around on her head.  She doesn’t notice, but others do!
And the poem concludes like this:

O wad some Power the giftie gie us

To see oursels as ithers see us!

It wad frae monie a blunder free us...*

Yes, how enlightening it would be if we could see ourselves as others see us.  

Like my friend’s twin boys.  If they could only have seen themselves the way their dad saw them!
Well that’s where wise counsel comes in.  A wise counselor can penetrate our self-deception and help us think of ourselves as we ought.

The tendency to deceive - it’s easy to see in children.

But how can we see our own self-deception?

By looking intently into the Word of God, and by seeking the wise counsel of others.

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May God bless you today!